The end.

I have decided to stop developing CrunchBang. This has not been an easy decision to make and I’ve been putting it off for months. It’s hard to let go of something you love.

When I first started working on CrunchBang, the Linux landscape was a very different place and whilst I honestly didn’t know if there was any value to it, I knew there was a place for CrunchBang on my own systems. As it turned out, there seemed to be quite a demand for it on other people’s systems too. I’m not entirely sure why this was the case, but if I had to guess, I would say that it was probably due to the lack of competition/alternatives of the same ilk. If I’m remembering correctly, at the time, there was no LXDE tasksel in Debian and certainly no Lubuntu around. CrunchBang filled a gap and that was nifty.

So, what’s changed?

For anyone who has been involved with Linux for the past ten years or so, I’m sure they’ll agree that things have moved on. Whilst some things have stayed exactly the same, others have changed beyond all recognition. It’s called progress, and for the most part, progress is a good thing. That said, when progress happens, some things get left behind, and for me, CrunchBang is something that I need to leave behind. I’m leaving it behind because I honestly believe that it no longer holds any value, and whilst I could hold on to it for sentimental reasons, I don’t believe that would be in the best interest of its users, who would benefit from using vanilla Debian.

Talking of its users, thank you, you’ve been awesome and you’ve taught me so much, much of which is beyond the scope of this post, but needless to say, I think I’m much wiser now than I was before the existence of CrunchBang and its community of users. I’ve made many friends through the project, which for me, has ultimately been the biggest benefit of the project, and something I’ll be forever grateful for.

I also want to take a few words to thank my wife, Becky, aka bobobex. She has supported me and the project from the outset. Over the years, I’m sure I’ve bored her almost to death with my geeky gobbledygook and she’s never moaned about it once, well, not to me at least. Seriously though, thank you Becky for your support, help and guidance, you’re my rock and I love you.

Regarding what will happen to the CrunchBang forums, they will remain online. Ultimately, they belong to the community and so it will be for the community to decide what happens to them. I’m happy to continue supporting them for as long as need be. I have already expressed my thanks to the forum moderators, privately, but I would like to do so publicly too. Unless you’ve been involved with a project like CrunchBang, I’m not sure you can entirely appreciate the behind-the-scenes work that goes into it. The forum moderators have effectively kept the community running and without them, I’m sure there would not have been a community at all. Over the years, they’ve had to deal with some truly bonkers and poisonous people (seriously, there are some bat-fucking-crazy nutters out there with far too much time on their hands) and they’ve done so with enormous tact, diplomacy and decorum. All the forum mods have my utmost respect, they are an incredible bunch of people.

As for me, while I’m deeply sad to let go of a project that in many ways has defined my existence for many years, but I’m also excited to see what happens next. I’ve got a few little pet projects I want to work on, and I’ve also got a day job that I want to excel at. It’s going to be interesting to see what the future brings.

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As others have stated: thank you! I probably wouldn't have switched over to mainly Linux if it wasn't for Crunchbang. It showed me that the Linux experience didn't have to be bloaty and that I had more freedom and control over what I wanted it to be.

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this is sad news. THANK YOU for all you have created. still loving the distro ad the forum since I popped in in 2009. great that the forum will stay. apart from the distro being excellent, the forum and the community excels.

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At least you don't have to sell us all for scientific experiments

PS. Thank you very much. In a small but significant way, CrunchBang and its forums brought something special to my life and no doubt to the lives of many others, as the comments here testify. I don't know what the special sauce was but other Openbox + meta-distribution combinations never felt quite as well thought out, consistent or solid. Good luck for the future, I'm sure your other projects will be just as awesome.

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Thank you corenominal for all of your work. Ubuntu is the distro that made linux reachable for me but Crunchbang is the distro that made me love linux. I am sure your work has had a big impact in many people's computing life. I am not running Crunchbang anymore but I will keep lurking this place. Once again, thank you sir.

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Hey Phil,#! was my daily driver at work for a year in 2012 when arch, mint and xubuntu kept failing me.Getting a great experience out of the box, and keeping it stable and predictable over time did have value for me.

Thank you very much, I learned a ton about getting a light setup together on my own as well, on debian then on arch.

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I'm saddened by this news. Unfortunately I disagree with you, that #! doesn't have anything to offer - it's still my distribution of choice, since it packs so much awesome in it. It's basically debian, set up with minimalistic environment. If I were to make my own installation, I'd surely make it look more or less like #!, but with Crunchbang existing, I don't have to.Plus it's super easy to switch to Crunchbang unstable/testing, which makes it up-to-date great distro, that's swift, ellegant, and reliable.This said, I understand the situation and want to thank you for your work. Crunchbang made me switch to linux, and if it wasn't for it, I would still use windows, which is crappy. Thanks for giving me this opportunity. I wish you good luck in whatever you do.

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Well, i haven't posted on here in a long time but i can't let today go by without taking some time to thank 'The Boss' for #!.

Philip: Cheers for #!, it's the first GNU/Linux distro that i fell in love with, the first one that was really stable and ran well and ran consistently well through updates and my own mis-handling. #! was (is) a rock-solid, forgiving OS that never got in my way, and although i'm not using it any more, it is the yard-stick that i use to judge other distros with.

So, again, 'Thank you' for giving me a distro that demonstrated how well linux can work, and i wish you all the very best in your future endeavours.